Mingle it up

I love all kinds of vegetarian stuffed Parathas like aloo, gobi, paneer, mooli etc. Being Gujarati (from east India), our parathas are small & thin like our rotis or I should say smaller & thinner than the parathas made in North India. But I simply love those big & thick ones with lots of stuffing inside.
Actually in north India, Parathas are heavily (almost fried) cooked with ghee or butter which makes them extremely delicious but unhealthy too. But if you go skimpy on the fat, Parathas can be one of the very well-balanced & satisfying meal. You get goodness from whole-wheat, heavily stuffed with vegetables & some good-fat like canola oil.

I owe my stuffed paratha’s recipe to my good friend Bindu. She taught me different stuffings to put inside a paratha & they are delicious. And its so easy, you learn one recipe & it’s like you can make 5 different varieties from it.

So lets get started

General Stuffing Recipe

-1 cup finely grated vegetable

• Gobi (Cauliflower)
• Mooli
• Carrot
• Corn - grate fresh cob of corn
• Paneer
• Paneer+ finely grated cabbage - these are healthier than just paneer & taste delicious.
• Spinach - For Spinach Parathas, I use frozen chopped spinach; thawed & excess water removed after thawing.

-1/3 cup very finely chopped onions
-1 small finely chopped green chili
-1 tsp finely chopped ginger
-2 tbsp of finely chopped cilantro
-salt to taste
-1/4 tsp Chaat masala
-1/2 tsp cummin powder
-1/4 tsp chili powder (optional)
-1/4 tsp Aamchur powder (dry mango powder)

Steps

1. Make the regular Roti/Chapati Dough & rest it for 15-20 minutes.

2. Gobi/Mooli/Carrot/Paneer stuffing

Grate the vegetable, add onions & all the spices. Mix it well & adjust the seasoning as per your taste. You can add any other spice as well to suit your taste.

• But one additional step with Mooli Or Carrot stuffing is that after grating, add little salt & leave it for 5-10 minutes. This will help to ooze out excess water from the grated vegetable. Press the mixture to remove out all the water from the mixture. It will be very difficult to stuff the Parathas with this watery mixture & roll them out.
• Add onions & other spices after removing out the water.

3. Spinach Stuffing

• I use a little different method for spinach stuffing. Thaw the frozen spinach & press out all the excess water from spinach.
• Add 1 tsp of oil on a pan, add chopped chilies, onions & ginger. Then add spinach & rest of the spices. Saute spinach mixture for 3-4 minutes so that raw flavor of spinach is gone & all the water is dried out.
• Turn off the flame & cool this mixture before stuffing it.

Rolling out the parathas

1. For 1 Paratha, I take 2 balls of dough about 1.5 inch thick.
2. Roll out 2 small rotis of equal size (about 4-5 inch in diameter) from the 2 balls.
3. On one roti, spread evenly about 2 spoonfuls of stuffing, leaving the edges.
4. Place another roti on top of this & gently press out the edges. Press everywhere on the surface to remove any air pockets.
5. Dust some flour on top, & roll it out carefully into the size you like.
6. Heat the tava on med- high flame. Before transferring the paratha on the tava make sure the tava is nicely heated.
7. Let the paratha cook on one side for 1-2 minutes until you see its turning light brown.
8. Flip the paratha, & lightly coat the cooked side with butter/ghee/oil.
9. After 1 min or so when it starts getting light brown spots on the bottom; Flip on to other side & again lightly coat another side with the fat of your choice.
10. Nicely press the parathas while being cooked on tava. Your parathas are done when you see that all the rawness is gone & the dough is evenly cooked.
11. Place the parathas in a casserole or aluminium foil.

Enjoy the parathas with a small dab of Makkhan(whipped butter), cool yogurt & my cilantro/coriander chutney Or pickle.. Yumm !!

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